


Up jumped the devil

by DecayMode



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, Dysfunctional Relationships, M/M, Parent/Child Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 13:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6660148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DecayMode/pseuds/DecayMode
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If anyone asked her to describe their relationship, she would apathetically state that Rick wouldn't change the attitude towards his son much even if the last took the guns from Rick's safe and went to school to start a massacre.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up jumped the devil

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are gladly appreciated; all mistakes are my own.

More than anything these days, Lori feels regret. The moment she chose Shane over Rick it had all gone to hell. She'd simply been scared, realizing that her own son couldn't forgive her for her actions. If only she had reached out to close the gap between them sooner, everything would've been different.

It is too late, now, she's not stupid not to see it. The rare days when she gets to see Carl never end well. He's distant, just like she made a mistake of being seven years ago, doesn't talk to her much, and if he happens to notice Shane somewhere around, his death-glare could burn out every living thing within a mile radius.

And the worst part, Lori scolds herself mentally, is that he's being reasonable. It was her who broke his beloved father's heart and left him to deal with the consequences, after all.

Now Carl looks at her with that infinite, overseeing gaze he learned from Rick, only to turn back to his cellphone a couple of seconds later. “Is that your friend you're texting?” Lori can't think of anything else to say to break the silence.

“Yeah, exactly,” Carl doesn't look away from the screen, “he's picking me up in ten minutes.”

Lori doesn't need to ask who he is referring to at this point; she just takes another sip of her coffee, failing to hold back the tears. Carl finally puts his phone in a pocket and looks at her once again.

“You need to move on now, Lori,” he stopped calling her mom at the age of thirteen. There is merely a thing she misses more. “You can't change anything now. Gotta move on.” He has a sad smile on his face. “I'm eighteen next week, so there's no need to meet anymore. Time's up. I'll wait outside.”

She wants to ask whether he's happy with his life now, but the door's already closed behind him, with a bell ringing throughout the cafe they were in.

Her drink has long since gone cold.

***

 

Rick got shot the day after his son turned seventeen.

A month later, and Carl'd been willing to trade every single thing he would ever possess just for his father to wake up. He got what he wanted, in a way; one can hardly wake up from a prolonged coma the same person. Rick managed to get off lightly, actually, although he'd still space out every now and then.

Weirdly, Carl is happy that it happened the way it did. With Rick being the only person left for him, seeing his dad go to work every morning brought the heart-wrenching feeling he could only get rid of with waking up the next day to the warmth of Rick's hot body beside him. The feeling would return to drag him down forty minutes later, when Rick was at the door leaving for work again.

Carl still remembered walking out of the classroom during a midterm test when his phone started buzzing for the third time. Some guy confirming his name and relations to officer Grimes, and then some girl screaming down the hall while he was busy figuring out why his vision suddenly was becoming blurry and colorless and the line between floor and wall started tilting so drastically.

Carl doesn't plan on ever telling his dad how terrible he felt after regaining consciousness, and how he was close to a panic attack once the memories flooded his mind. Rick was sensible enough to quit his job in the police force without hearing that. Still, Carl suspected that he knew, somehow, if the dream he told him about was any indication.

“I remember–badly, really. Just some fragments. There was a deer, and you looked so fascinated–and the next moment you were falling to the ground next to him. I think I can still hear the shot.” Carl thinks it's the same sound Rick heard before being shot himself, but the man doesn't seem to remember a thing from that day. Carl thinks it's a good thing.

Rick tells him every remaining detail from his dream, and there're not lots of them, but Carl wishes his dad would soon forget one particular thing. “And the echoing sound of... a cracking skull, ya know. And people, all screaming. That's what I heard before waking up. Apparently someone bashed my head in. My choice, probably. Finally found a way out, I guess,” Rick cracks a smile at that, and a genuine one, but Carl can't help the shiver going down his spine.

It's okay now, and if Lori was brave enough to ask what Carl's really feeling these days, he would answer it's happiness.

***

 

Rick always seems to run a temperature.

It took Carl an inappropriately short amount of time to get used to it when he started sleeping with the man in the same bed as a child. His father felt like some primal fire that'd scare all the monsters away. After Lori'd left Carl felt like their house was lurking with monsters. This, and also he was sure his dad was as afraid of the loneliness as Carl himself. Four years later he realized he was right.

“Why do you have to _insist_ on being so hot?”

“Ah, you never stop complaining,” Rick pulls him close to put a kiss at his neck, and then he rests his head just there, and Carl's sure he'll see traces of sunburns once Rick pulls away.

“Give you a ride to school?”

“Nah, breakfast'd be nice though.”

Rick simply chuckles and gets up, his sleeping pants hanging loosely around his hips. Carls watches him leave the room, a lingering thought of his father loosing even more weight in the back of his mind. He then looks down at his own chest. The burns are not there, but there's always a next time.

***

 

With Rick in a hospital, Lori was supposed to look after Carl. She'd been bitterly glad about it at first, before she realized it didn't change things much. When he wasn't at school, Carl would spend his time beside Rick's bed, constantly talking about something so Rick wouldn't feel lonely. She made a mistake of bringing Shane along one day, when Carl returned early from school. She expected many things, but Carl just walked past them, only telling her how he wished it was Shane instead of Rick, abruptly reasoning himself with a _but it's always good people that get hurt, it makes sense_. He called Shane later that day to tell them he was sorry and he never should've said something like that, but it didn't help Lori dismiss her doubts.

***

 

Carl was thirteen when Rick met Jessie. She had a beautiful smile, clear eyes and a caring nature, all of it being shadowed by the ever-present bruises on her hands. Carl was sure there were more of them under her clothes. He sensed his father's empathy towards her, and that's why he never tried to protect her from Pete's drunken anger when the man broke into Rick's house and took a knife from their kitchen.

Carl needed to do something. He stepped away, rushing upstairs to knock his father back into the bedroom he walked out after hearing Pete's yelling and lock the door behind them. Carl knew that Rick didn't mean to push him with such force, but it turned out to be for the best. Once Carl's temple smashed against the corner of a drawer on his right, Rick stopped hearing anything beside the sound of blood dripping down on the floor.

Carl knew from the start that he could've stabbed Jessie himself with the same success.

***

 

Lori felt hysterical. It was closing to midnight when she ran into reception of a local hospital, fifteen minutes after Shane called her to tell about Carl. She spent the night next to his bed, trying to catch some information out of the muffled voices in the corridor.

Rick had just returned from questioning in the morning and took a minute to buy them something to eat when Carl opened his eyes. Lori could tell he was scared, and she reassured him, telling that his dad was alive and well. She almost expected him to ask why she was here if Rick was alright, but he never did.

He did, though, ask about Jessie.

***

 

It was almost a year after Rick'd met her, but Carl barely managed to call Jessie mom in front of Lori. He knew it was important, that all the happy memories of him and his dad and mom had to go, finally. He knew it was just for once, and he knew instantly that he reached his goal when Lori let out a surprised breath.

Rick never heard his son call Jessie mom, and it was good, too.

Lori left his hospital room just as Rick came back with a couple of sandwiches and a bottle of water, still shaky and with a hazy stare.

“Oh. You're up.”

***

 

Rick taught Carl to shoot a month later. Carl accidentally let it slip on one of their days together, and Lori couldn't do anything but take it into her consideration.

“He's just fourteen, Rick!”

“Well he doesn't have his own gun, and he's not getting one either. I don't see a problem.” Only Rick's Colt Python was as good as Carl's by the time Lori got to talk to her ex-husband again. Rick never told her that, and he also never told anyone about seeing his son with a key for his safe with the guns in it.

“What's that for, Carl?”

“I thought maybe I could, you know. Go to shoot something in the woods after school. There're no people around there anyways.”

“You can't do that,” is all Rick said, and Carl listened to him. Rick never changed the place where he hides the key, but Carl never opens the safe without dad's permission again.

***

 

He was sixteen when they fucked for the first time, and Carl still thinks that he would never miss any other person he had time to make out with before. He almost felt bad after seeing a somewhat broken expression on Rick's face, but it faded over time; it only took a couple of weeks for Rick to stop feeling bad about the whole situation.

Rick had always been protective before, but he became possessive only after.

***

 

Carl loves putting together the pieces of a puzzle that his father is. Rick seemed to grow almost feral in his dream, but Carl was right thinking that the memories would wither over time. There used to be some character traits of the man from that dream, but now Rick's back to his usual self. Carl doesn't hesitate much before calling him gentle, which is ridiculous, “but it's still true, dad.” Rick just laughs and shakes his head and looks at Carl with his sky-blue eyes.

Carl doesn't want to accept the idea of his father being not the same good person he used to be when Carl was ten. Carl ignores it, but Lori doesn't let herself do the same. She puts the pieces of her own puzzle together. If anyone asked her to describe their relationship, she would apathetically state that Rick wouldn't change the attitude towards his son much even if the last took the guns from Rick's safe and went to school to start a massacre. She's not far from the truth, considering the fact that Rick could've easily dealt with Pete. It would've been called self-defense in case things'd gone too far. But Jessie is dead and Pete is in prison. There's something else to it, Lori could swear, but she hasn't managed to figure it all out yet. And for now she is just watching Carl jump into Rick's car and give him a fresh milkshake he ordered before leaving her some five minutes ago.


End file.
